“Grosvenor, I
think seriously of going abroad. My complaint, so I am told by the opinion of
many medical men, is wholly a diseased sensibility (mind you, physical
sensibility), disordering the functions, now of the heart, now of the
intestines, and gradually debilitating me. Climate is the obvious remedy. In my
present state, to attempt to undergo the confinement of legal application were
actual suicide. I am anxious to be well, and to attempt the profession: much in
it I shall never do: sometimes my principles stand in my way, sometimes the
want of readiness which I felt from the first—a want which I always know
in company, and never in solitude and silence. Howbeit, I will make the
attempt; but mark you, if by stage writing, or any other writing, I can acquire
independence, I will not make the sacrifice of happiness it will inevitably
cost me. I love the country, I love study—devotedly I love it; but in
legal studies it is only the subtlety of the mind that is exercised. However, I
need not philippicise, and it is too late to veer about. In ’96 I might
have chosen physic, and succeeded in it. I caught at the first plank, and
missed the great mast in my reach; perhaps I may enable myself to swim by and
by. Grosvenor, I have nothing of what the world calls
ambition. I never thought it possible that I could be a great lawyer; I should
as soon expect to be the man
| 34 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
“I suffer a good deal from illness, and in a way, hardly understandable by those in health. I start from sleep as if death had seized me. I am sensible of every pulsation, and compelled to attend to the motion of my heart till that attention disturbs it The pain in my side is, I think, lessened, nor do I at all think it was consumption; organic affection it could not have been, else it had been constant; and a heart disease would not have been perceived there. I must go abroad, and recruit under better skies. Not to Lisbon: I will see something new, and something better than the Portuguese. Ask Duppa about Italy, about Trieste, and the way through Vienna, and say something to him on my part expressive of respect—of a wish one day to see more of him.
“But of these plans you shall know more when they are
more moulded into form. In the meantime
| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 35 |
“But now for more immediate affairs. The Anthology prospers. Send me something. O for another parody, such as ‘The Rhedycinian Barbers’—a ballad good as ‘The Circular Old Woman.’* There is a poem called Gebir, written by God knows who, sold for a shilling: it has miraculous beauties; and the Bishop of St Giles’s said the best poems in the Anthology were by Mrs. Opie and George Dyer! and he writes reviews!
“I expect to see my brother Henry to-morrow, after twenty months’ absence. He is now sixteen, and promises much. If I go abroad, I shall make every effort to take him with me. Tom is cruising, and, I think, likely to rise in his profession. . . . .
